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Democrat Juliette Kayyem of Cambridge, a former homeland security adviser at the state and national levels, is one of the candidates running in the 2014 race to become governor of Massachusetts.
(Associated Press)

For residents of Massachusetts to thrive they must have access to our economy through education, transportation, and a living wage job. When all residents have access, they will have a sense of mobility, a sense that the course of their lives – and their children’s lives – can move out of difficult circumstances and throughout our economy.

We have a tendency in campaigns to think about issues in silos: an education policy, or transportation policy, or economic policy. In an interconnected world, that tendency can inhibit bold and innovative thinking and have us focus on discrete issues rather than a comprehensive approach. We must envision a state that is welcoming, prepared, and connected for the coming decades, a state ready and able to compete in a global economy, and one that knows that everyone must have access to that effort.

Access can mean many things, but it cannot happen without infrastructure, which is the backbone of our state’s economy. Infrastructure prepares us for the future. Without an efficient, reliable, and forward-thinking infrastructure, our economy is less productive and able to expand and grow going forward. Transportation infrastructure – our roads, highways, and railways – helps move our workforce to their jobs, goods and services to customers, as well as employees and their families to homes and schools. It is what supports our high productivity and helps expand the economy through trade with the rest of the country and the global economy.

But infrastructure is much more than just transportation. It includes our energy system as well as telecommunications, connecting us to each other and the world. How and where we invest in infrastructure reflects core values we hold dear such as equality of opportunity and environmental stewardship.

Advancement in education must start with closing the opportunity and achievement gap, giving access to strong and creative educational opportunities for all. There is no better way to ensure that residents of the Commonwealth can continue to advance in the years and decades to come than to provide every child in Massachusetts with the best education possible. This education system must not only prepare children for college, but needs to push further towards educating them for a career. Starting with universal pre-K and extending to workforce training, we can educate the 240,000 unemployed residents to fill the 100,000 available jobs.

Finally, living wage careers can only be accessible through job growth today and in the future. We need to focus on jobs that stay and grow here, as well as jobs that we can lure here. We have the capacity to bring sustainable and vibrant jobs to this state and to prepare our workforce for them. For example, jobs in the clean tech industry, which are on an upward trend, employ skilled labor, such as solar panel installers. We must invest in this and other industries in innovative ways, such as motivating private investment through Green Banks.

Increased infrastructure, advanced education, and continued job growth will not come from settling for political sportsmanship, but must come from a surge of bold and innovative policy. Complex problems in this state are also an opportunity for creative solutions, embracing the ingenuity of all parts of the state from local governments, to regional planners, to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and community activists. We must see our challenges as those that will only be overcome if we embrace their commonalities and linkages and overcome our tendency to view issues as discrete. We all belong to this effort.

Juliette Kayyem is a Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts.